Death at Guantanamo Hovers Over Obama's Middle East Visit

In his speech in Egypt on Thursday, in which he promised "A new beginning," Barack Obama did not specifically mention the death of a prisoner at Guantánamo on Monday -- and the extent to which the prison's existence has soured relations between the United States and the Muslim world -- except to repeat his most concise promise to move on from the lawlessness of the Bush years: "I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantánamo Bay closed by early next year."

And yet, Guantánamo -- and recent events at the prison -- hovered unnervingly over the President's visit to the Middle East. A death at Guantánamo is always felt keenly in the Muslim world, and is also uncomfortable for the Obama administration, which, since reviewing conditions at the prison in January, claims that it is running a "humane" facility.

Behind the rhetoric, however, the truth is still bleak. Guantánamo may look, more than ever, like a regular U.S. prison, with half of the remaining 239 prisoners now sharing communal facilities, and others, in two maximum security blocks, allowed limited opportunities to socialize, but the prisoners held there have, for the most part, been imprisoned without charge or trial for over seven years, unlike even the most hardened convicted criminals on the U.S. mainland.

In addition, the widespread euphoria that greeted Obama's election victory, and the hope that it would result in the prison's swift closure, has turned to frustration, as only two prisoners (Binyam Mohamed and Lakhdar Boumediene) have been released in the last four months. Shane Kadidal, a lawyer with New York's Center for Constitutional Rights, explained that the prisoners were now saying, "At least Bush sent some people home," and further frustration has greeted news that Obama is considering proposing new legislation authorizing "preventive detention" for up to a hundred of the remaining prisoners, effectively legitimizing the Bush administration's detention policies.

As a result, many of the prisoners, like Muhammad Salih, the Yemeni prisoner who died on Monday, apparently by committing suicide, have resorted to hunger strikes as the only means of protesting against their arbitrary and seemingly endless imprisonment. For these men, strapped into a restraint chair twice a day, and force-fed against their will via a tube that is thrust up their noses and into their stomachs, the prison is anything but "humane."

Muhammad Salih was the fifth prisoner to commit suicide at Guantánamo, but the first under Obama's watch. In keeping with the president's desire to portray the prison in the best possible light, it is unlikely that anyone in the administration will make a comment to compare with a statement made by Rear Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of Guantánamo at the time of the first three deaths in June 2006, who said, "I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetric warfare committed against us." However, it is also unlikely that the government will come clean about Muhammad Salih's status, and concede that there is no evidence that he even remotely resembled one of the fabled "terror suspects" whom the prison was ostensibly established to hold.

Salih himself admitted that he had traveled to Afghanistan many months before the 9/11 attacks, to fight as a foot soldier for the Taliban against the Muslims of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan's long-running civil war. When the U.S. military reviewed his case at Guantánamo in 2004, he acknowledged being a member of the Taliban, but made a point of adding, "Yes, but that doesn't mean I supported Osama bin Laden."

With no information to indicate that Muhammad Salih was connected to al-Qaeda's terrorist activities, his death should serve as another important reminder that the Bush administration's policy of subjecting prisoners to arbitrary detention as "enemy combatants" has been a wretched failure. Had the former regime obeyed domestic and international laws, it would have held those regarded as terrorists as criminal suspects, to be prosecuted in federal courts, and, after adequate screening (which never took place) would have held other combatants as prisoners of war, according to the Geneva Conventions.

If this had happened, we would now be discussing whether it was feasible to imprison someone until the end of hostilities in a "war" whose supporters regard it as a struggle that might last for generations, and the answer, of course, would be no. Muhammad Salih, a foot soldier in another war, which preceded the 9/11 attacks, and had nothing to do with international terrorism, had been imprisoned for longer than the duration of the Second World War when his life ended in Guantánamo, even though the circumstances in which he was captured -- during the overthrow of the Taliban and the establishment of a new Afghan government -- came to an end no later than 3 November 2004, when Hamid Karzai was elected as President.

Although the response to Muhammad Salih's death has been muted in the West, and did not surface publicly in the Middle East during President Obama's visit, the ripples from the latest death in Guantánamo -- and, no doubt, rumors that Salih was killed, or, perhaps more convincingly, that he died as a result of years of brutal force-feeding -- surely made themselves felt behind the scenes. If Obama truly wishes to distance himself from the lawless initiatives of his predecessor, he needs to think deeply about an appropriate response, and will, I hope, reflect on the distinction between terror suspects and foot soldiers, rethink what "preventive detention" really means, and, above all, move swiftly to release more prisoners before there are any other deaths at Guantánamo.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press), and maintains a blog here.

Follow Andy Worthington on Twitter: www.twitter.com//GuantanamoAndy

Comments

[POLITICAL SHAMPOO]

This Guantanamo bay seem to me a political problem between the two political parties that the cliquish political leaders while in power created a false rumor that USA's security would be at risk if it is closed. what to say of USA under the present conditions of the world and the underground terrorist activities none of the party would like to close down it to avoid being blamed if any impromtue event takes place.

We heard the president of USA confessing publicly that he went to war in Iraq on false pretext telling lies. “Yesterday’s unwavering Commander-in-chief got killed own brave's male and female on pure lies that he confessed publicly. But see how he is moving about freely without being questioned for doing unlawful deeds as the president of USA. It definitely does speak volumes of negative of US Justice system which needs to be seen now or never.

Whatever the ex-president and the ex-vice president did during their tenure in office with to Guantanamo bay and prisoners treatment and introduction of interrogation system of course was very serious offences. This should be thoroughly investigated, and it if found guilty should be dealt with under the law of the land..

PRESIDENTIAL ORDER TO CLOSE DOWN GUANTANAMO BY FIRST HALF OF NEXT YEAR SHOULD BE OK . LET US WAIT AND SEE. WHAT HAPPENS INSTEAD OF COMMENTING NEGATIVE ABOUT THE PRESIDENT AFTER ALL HE IS NOT HOLDING ALLAUDDIN'S MAGIC LAMP.

[watchTVgetSTUPID]

Obama talks the talk but his actions indicate he is not really change. Dragging his feet on getting out of Iraq, expanding the Army size, expanding the military budget even larger than Bush did, increasing our troops in Afghanistan and commiting to many years involvement, attacking Pakistan, wiping out many civilians, leaving destruction and disruption across occupied lands.

Obama has put Wall Street in charge of his economic policies and the results are a disaster. He is hollowing out the value of the dollar with incipient inflation about to derail any recovery, He put Wall Street's Rattner in charge of the auto bailout which resulted in bankruptcies and dismantling of a large part of America's remaining industry. One factory he closed made a bomber per hour during WWII. Obama was exposed as a shameless shill for Wall Street when he fired his economic advisor during the campaign for admiting Obama was lying when he claimed he would redo the NAFTA deal. Now we see the results .... instead of balancing trade, Obama decided to wipe out a million jobs associated directly & indirectly with the auto industry.

[1dogs2]

Oh no, you've been watching TV again, STUPID.

[gilbo]

What Mr Worthington so conveniently forgets to mention is that one of those detainees released, Lakhdar Boumediene, was only released after a long battle starting with winning his Supreme Court case, Bush vs. Boumediene, in June 2008. Bush's reaction to this case which asserted that Guantanamo detainees had a right to habeas corpus and to a hearing to contest the charges against them, was to have Boumediene and many others sent to Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan, since Bagram was not US soil. In February, the Obama Justice Department embraced the Bush position saying that detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment.

Remember Obama on the Sentate floor in 2006? "as a parent, I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to Guantanamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were being held and being able to prove their innocence." In March, a Bush appointed federal judge rejected Bush's (and now Obama's) position and said that the Bush vs. Boudemiene decision applies to Bagram just as much as Guantanemo.

How did Obama's Justice Dept react to this? Why, by appealing the decision and in so doing defending one of Bush's most unlawful practices. So Andy, it's not just that Obama hasn't done enough to bring justice to the Guantanemo detainees, he has quite clearly kept in complete step with Bush and prevented it.

[SensibleCentrist]

I have actually visited and been inside Guantanamo, and can assure one and all: the hunger strikers are not "force fed". They willingly, even eagerly, line up for their twice daily ration. The hunger strike is a game to them, psychological warfare. They know they will get their sustenance from their "meals" through the feeding tube, and quite willingly cooperate, so they can make their PR statement by engaging in the hunger strike. That does not make it "right" to hold them, nor does it make it wrong. GITMO should be closed because of what it represents, not because its inhabitants are innocent. By and large the innocent have been released by now. And it is totally behavior driven as to who is in more secure and isolated confinement and who is not, with a few exceptions for the most dangerous, for whom the evidence of guilt is overwhelmingly clear. The rest are simply imprisoned in locations based on their behavior. Again, that does not make it right or wrong that they are being held. But the treatment is far more humane than any other American prison offers. The prisoners are well fed, have excellent health care, and plenty of time outside, unless they behave horribly.

[bvongrabe]

RIGHT! Those on hunger strike line up to get their food ! SensibleCnetrist, this is planet Earth, not Vega! Let's face it, out of 850 detaines held for years, over 600 have been released because they were innocent. Many of them were tortured, as we know from FBI documents - and to the astonishment of Republicans they joined Al-Qaeda. Who was it that said torture is a recruitment tl for Al-Qaeda.

[arcticredriver]

SensibleCentrist I believe that most of the long term hunger strikers no longer struggle with the guards to prevent being dragged to the hospital. One captive, Ahmed Zaid Salim Zuhair, made the news recently, because he had 80 recent infractions of the camp rules -- for refusing to attend his force feedings.

Ben Fox, of the Associated Press, wrote: "according to court documents reviewed by The Associated Press, guards have struggled with him repeatedly, at least once using pepper spray, shackles and brute force to drag him to a restraint chair for his twice-daily dose of a liquid nutrition mix force-fed through his nose."
http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fap.google.com%2Farticle%2FALeqM5iwzJXqzST3n1TAjrTYuqvs2-qT8AD9413VDO0&date=2008-10-26
http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fhostednews%2Fap%2Farticle%2FALeqM5iwzJXqzST3n1TAjrTYuqvs2-qT8AD94O604O0&date=2008-11-29

SensibleCentrist, please inform us, on what do you base your assertion that the innocents have been sent home? The Uyghurs are still there.

Consider Muhammad Salih -- would you classify him as an "innocent"?

Note what he acknowledged in 2004 would make him a combatant, entitled to the protections of POW status -- protections denied to him by the Bush administration.

During his annual review boards he faced a mounting series of additional allegations --internally inconsistent allegations. I suggest that a guy who proceeded to where he could surrender when he learned the USA had weighed in to the Afghan civil war, should be considered as innocent as any other POW.

[Eyeheartfreedumb]

What I still fail to comprehend is how the right is arguing to continue this terrible misdeed, claiming that it's a good thing. Do they simply not want to admit making mistakes (Bush compaigned on accountability), or do they enjoy the fact that we are spitting on our founding fathers (let's not forget that one of the injustices that the first white immigrants were fleeing from was indefinite imprisonment without a trial for political/religious reasons).
This has got to stop and trials must take place if the American experiment is to continue. Too many people have died in our custody (about a quarter to a third of which have admittedly been "murders"). This is not America. We've got to take our country back from those who would exploit its freedoms for their own financial gain (liberal or conservative, it doesn't matter, they are all the enemy if they are abusing the imperfections of the country our ancestors built). Pragmatism is fine, but for those in Gitmo who are innocent (let's not pretend that there isn't at least one) pragmatism doesn't give back seven years, and it doesn't begin to apologise for the kidnapping and torture they have endured.
Stand up America!

[Absintheforall]

Ah, you must live a very sequestered life; at least your notions would lead people to believe this.
Most Americans think Gitmo is fine, just as it is, thank you.
Please do your research before you post.

[billw8017]

Eyeheartfreedumb did his/her research, you watched 24 and did yours but, as Steven Colbert observes, reality has a liberal bias.

[RoloTomassi]

Competely untrue; the journalist responsible for the recent poll claiming such is a known rightwinger with an agenda.

Don't believe every bit of BS reporting you read in the MSM.

[Emlyn]

Would you like to have been imprisoned there? Think about it. If the Republicans had continued in office, you might have been.

[JEP57]

What this article is impying is that mainstream Muslims around the world must somehow identify and sympathize with terrorists who carry out their acts in the name of Islam, and get upset when they're mistreated. We're always told that legitimate Muslims condemn terrorism and see these people as murderers using Islam as an excuse for their mayhem, so why would they feel things at Guantanamo "keenly".

[RoloTomassi]

Are you truly that dense? What is now well established is the FACT that many of these people at gitmo had no connection to terrorism and were sold to the US for a bounty. Beyond that I have no doubt that there a young men who may have been flirting with the idea, but would never have accepted the notion of destroying themselves for Islam.

And the point he is making is that all of these people--related to actual terrorism or not--have families in the middle east who care what happens to them, and some surely have more than minimal support and concern from their native countries and communities.

[NormDePleum]

Well said, my friend!

[JEP57]

If it's been proven by FACTS that some of the detainees have been sent there falsely for a bounty, then the facts presented would have already released these men and the Muslim world would know this by news accounts. But my guess is that the vast majority of the detainees were captured in battle, people who are more likely to do anything in the name of their version of Islam.

[Yalegirl03]

Thank you! I think that is the problem, too much of the American public think that most or all Guantanamo prisoners are terrorists, when they are not. Many of them are simply guilty of being a low level civil servant for the Taliban, the government at that time, or of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[DUSAA-1775]

a Muslim terrorists carries a suicide bomb and kills himself and 30 other people in Pakistan and the Muslim world barely yawns.... a Muslim terrorists commits suicide in Gitmo and takes no one else with him and the Muslim world is in an uproar?....I do believe the Muslim world is deeply disturbed.

[Jigglypuff]

I identify and sympathize with Mr. Salih as a fellow human being and, I'm not even a Muslim. Can you not, at least, agree that detaining a person without evidence, without trial, and without humane treatment is an injustice?
Mr. Worthington's article is just highlighting the contradiction of President Obama's speech to the Muslim world because it seems that not enough is being done to correct the wrongs began by the Bush administration.

[mikefina]

I would accept your proposition if it weren't founded on a false predicate.

Yes, IF the conditions were not humane, and IF there was/is not evidence, it would be an injustice. In fact not and but if EITHER of those conditions were true, it would be an injustice.

THe claim is that they were battlefield combatants or engaged in terroistic activites. I still don't believe that those claims have be disproved--largely because the venue of capture didn't lend itself neatly to US criminal court rules of evidence. I know that there is a contrary argument to my claim, but for now, I'm sticking with my claim.

Moreover--the conditions are not inhumane. THey suck. THey are miserable AND there better not be any torture going on, still. But it is a prison, and the conditions in GITMO are ananlogous to US max detention.

I am sympathetic to the balance of your post.

[pmorlan]

Thanks for all of your hard work, Andy. Maybe after President Obama finishes his tour of Buchenwald today he will have man's inhumanity to man on his mind and will rethink some of his current policies. I hope so.

P.S. I'm sending you an email today concerning a related subject. I hope you get a chance to see it and respond. I'd sent one to you a few months ago and never received a reply so I assume it got lost among the many email you must receive.

Thanks

[Andy Worthington - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks, p. I wouldn't, of course, compare Buchenwald to the "War on Terror," but I certainly hope that Obama's bearing in mind that what we understand as human rights, and the great founding post-war documents that sought to put them into practice -- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the revisions to the Geneva Conventions in the immediate post-war period -- were designed specifically to prevent not just genocide, but also the use of torture, inhumane treatment, and the pretense that, in wartime, there was a category of human being who could slip through the net of the protections of the Geneva Conventions. There isn't. It's as simple as that.
And if these people are NOT prisoners of war, then they should have been put them on trial asap.
Oh, and I don't think your email got through to me (some don't; I never know why). Can you try andy.worth­ington[AT]­talktalk.n­et?

[arcticredriver]

Thanks for another excellent article Andy.

RepublicNo­tADemocrac­y, I'd be very interested, if you cared to share it, where you "live in the Muslim world". I don't live in the Muslim world. But I read English language newspapers published in the Muslim world. And if those newspapers reflect the sentiments of their readers the Muslim World is concerned about Guantanamo.

RepublicNo­tADemocrac­y, you close your comment with an assertion that is demonstrably not true -- "The world does not revolve about the doings in a camp on the desolate end of Cuba."

We need to allocate our counter-terrorism resources as wisely as possible. Unfortunately the Bush/Cheney administration squandered precious counter-terrorism resources on wild goose chases -- triggered by false confessions and false denunciations flowing from its brutal interrogations of its captives in Guantanamo, Bagram, and other more secret torture camps.

The counter-terrorism world has revolved around the "doings in a camp on the desolate end of Cuba" -- and public safety has suffered because of it.

The Bush administration abrogated the USA's Geneva Convention obligations. The best thing for public safety would be to restore the USA's treatment of captives back to compliance with the Geneva Convention.

The presumption of innocence protects the public in general, because it would provide necessary sanity checking that would lead to using our counter terrorism resources more wisely.

[Andy Worthington - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks for the comment, and for understanding the significance of the death of Muhammad Salih; in particular the connection between his hunger strike and his death, and the conditions in which he was held for seven and a half years -- in "preventive detention," of the kind that President Obama has recently been advocating.

Readers may also be interested in the article I wrote immediately following his death, in which I provided two examples of information supposedly pertaining to Mr. Salih, extracted through the interrogations of other prisoners, which serve only to demonstrate the extent to which prisoners made false allegations against their fellow prisoners, either under duress, or through bribery. One placed him in the Tora Boara mountains when he was already in Afghan custody, and the other was Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a supposed "high-value detainee," held for several years in a secret prison run by the CIA:
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/06/02/yemeni-prisoner-muhammad-salih-dies-at-guantanamo/

[Republicnotademocracy]

You say that a "death in Guantanamo is always felt keenly in the muslim world."
Well, I live in "the muslim world", and I'm here to tell you that you don't know what you're talking about. I deal with these folks routinely-- and closely-- every day and ,except for a very few wackos, they couldn't care a fig about whether Gitmo stays open or closed or falls into the sea.

The world does not revolve about the doings in a camp on the desolate end of Cuba.

[RoloTomassi]

Pure BS; you are a known propagandist in this forum.

[1dogs2]

I'll just bet that "these folks" really open up and tell you exactly what's on their minds with respect to world politics. You are, after all, so much more reliable a source than Muslims themselves.

[TruthoverPropaganda]

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I admire your tireless efforts in calling for the just treatment of these detainees. Your blog posts, even though Huff Post rarely posts them on the Home page, give a voice to those whose voices can’t be heard, and for this I want to say THANK YOU. These are human beings and they are being treated like dogs, even dogs deserve better treatment than this. I believe Obama is worse than Bush in some ways, he’s trying to make the illegal things that Bush did now legal, like preventively detaining people for as long as he wants.